Engineering My Faith

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 15, 2025, Trinity Sunday. Based on John 16:12-15.

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There’s a YouTube video that I love called, “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies.” In it, St. Patrick attempts to explain the Trinity to a couple of “simple Irish folk,” who turn out to not be so simple after all. The first analogy he uses is water: it can be a liquid, ice, or steam. The simple Irish folk chastise him for promoting modalism, a heretical doctrine that claimed the Trinity were three modes of God rather than three distinct persons.

He says, OK, well, it’s like the sun: it’s a star, that produces heat, and that produces light. Wait a minute, Patrick: that’s Arianism. Arius was a heretic who claimed that the Father was the ground of all being, and that the Son and the Holy Spirit issued from the Father.

Now he gets to his most famous analogy: a shamrock. Like three leaves of a shamrock, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit together comprise God. But wait: that’s partialism! Each person of the Godhead is God, not just part of God. They are all fully divine, and yet together they are One.

So finally St. Patrick falls back to the creed of Athanasius:

we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,

   neither blending their persons

    nor dividing their essence.

        For the person of the Father is a distinct person,

        the person of the Son is another,

        and that of the Holy Spirit still another.

        But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,

        their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.

Athanasius’s creed goes on and on, but it’s more of the same. Did you understand what I just said? I sure didn’t.

They say that Trinity Sunday is the day when the most heresy is committed in pulpits around the world. The root of the problem is that ultimately, when we are discussing God, words fail. Human understanding fails. As St. Augustine once said, “If you understand, it is not God.” Our finite human brains cannot comprehend the infinite glory of our triune God. So we do our best to explain things and end up falling short of reality.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m colorblind. What that means is that my eyes do not perceive color the same way most people’s eyes do. So let me ask you: What does green look like? How would you describe it to me? You could say, well, it’s what grass looks like, but that’s not really helpful. That’s telling me what objects display a certain color, but not what the color actually is.

Theology can be roughly divided into cataphatic and apophatic. Cataphatic theology is where I mostly find my home, as do most mainline Protestants. Cataphatic theology is positive theology: it’s based on affirmations of who God is. We have creeds, right? A whole book full of them, the Book of Confessions, that try to explain God. For 1700 years, Christians have been dividing themselves over their understandings of God and the words they use. The Eastern and Western churches split for many reasons, but a big one was a clause that the Roman church added to the Nicene Creed, “the Holy Spirit, …who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” The Eastern churches said that no, the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father. In this and many other ways, we Christians have splintered what should be one Church over words.

Yet in the end, words fail. Then enters apophatic theology, which literally means “unsaying.” It’s sometimes called “negative theology” because it consists of saying what God is not. Here’s an example. “God is love.” Yes, God is loving, and 1 John is an extended meditation on how God is love. But think of all the ways we use that word. I love my family. I love this church. I love pizza. I love hunting. I love working on electronics. Are these all ways that God loves, or that God is love? Yes, but God is so much more!

And then think of all the ways that we show love. You can probably think of many times in your life when you weren’t sure what the most loving choice was, particularly if you are a parent or if you were in a relationship with an addict. Where is the line between loving someone and enabling bad behavior? Where is the line between appropriate discipline and cruelty? It’s hard to know. There are many people who think yelling at people and calling them sinners is in fact loving, because they want to keep them from going to Hell. Are all of these ways that God is love?

So in the end, if what we have and what we do is love, God cannot possibly be love because God is so much MORE than what we could possibly mean by that word. Thus, we say no, God is not love, at least not as we humans understand it. That word, “love,” points us towards God, but God transcends it in every possible way.

What we are left with are analogies and metaphors and stories that help us understand God in some way, but ultimately, we always fall short. The fundamental Trinitarian formula is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today, on Father’s Day, I’m happy to make an analogy between fathers everywhere and our Eternal Father. The analogy fails in two basic ways. One, God did not literally “father” humanity, but rather fashioned us in God’s image. Two, if God is our Father, He is a perfect Father, one so far exceeding human fathers in every way that we cannot ultimately understand God through that term. A related problem is that we don’t all have good father figures with which to compare God.

Back in 2006, PC(USA) commissioned and endorsed a study on the Trinity, titled “God’s Love Overflowing,” that explored many other ways to understand the mystery of our triune God. So let’s try another trinitarian formula that was in their report: God the compassionate mother, God the beloved child, and God the life-giving womb. Here, the first Person of the Trinity is still a parent, but now we can speak of her feminine attributes. If you have trouble with an authoritarian Father image, perhaps a compassionate, caring, comforting Mother image is better. God the Mother takes responsibility for healing our wounds, teaching us to be loving, and guiding us into healthy relationships. The second Person of the Trinity is a beloved child, our divine sibling who demonstrates how to love God the Parent and how to love one another. We are all beloved children of God, and we can all model our lives on Christ, regardless of gender. The third Person of the Trinity is the source of our lives, the womb from which the Church was born just last week on Pentecost—or, well, 2000 years ago, but you know what I mean.

So if God the Mother, the Child, and the Womb help you to understand our triune God as the source of love and life, that’s great! But in the end, this metaphor fails to capture all of the attributes of God.

Let’s try another one: God the Rainbow of Promise, God the Ark of Salvation, and God the Dove of Peace. In this trinitarian re-telling of Noah’s story, we get another perspective on the ways the three Persons of the Trinity interact with humanity. The First Person sets a rainbow in the sky as a reminder of the promise that humanity is beloved and will never be destroyed. By extension, we can comprehend all of the promises of God given throughout the Bible as expressions of the fundamental promise that God treasures us. God acts in the world as the Second Person of the Trinity, the ark that carries us to salvation. Christ didn’t just proclaim salvation, Christ is the vessel of our salvation, the embodiment of the promise that the First Person makes to us. We know of our salvation because of the Third Person, the dove who brings peace to us all.

I think this is a beautiful way to understand the story of Noah, as an experience of the triune God. But it too fails. Christ was not just a boat made of wood. Christ was actually a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. The Holy Spirit is not just peace, but also power and love and unity. So yes, God is rainbow, ark, and dove, but not really.

In the end, none of our analogies or metaphors really capture the essence of the Trinity, but all of them point in the general direction of who God is and how God interacts with humanity. One common theme through it all is LOVE. The Trinity is three Persons united with so much love that it overflows. There is so much love that the three Persons are fully united into one God. And then God’s love flows out and fills the universe, uniting us all into God, too.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’s farewell discourse gets very mystical: the Father is in the Son as the Son is in the Father and the Son is in us as we are in Him and he will send an Advocate who tells us all things about the Father and the Son. Wow. I think this was an early attempt, in the limited language that the disciples could comprehend, to approach the divine Truth of the Trinity. I probably haven’t said it any better, but maybe some additional analogies can help us, as Paul wrote in Ephesians, to have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Because in the end, we cannot comprehend the Trinity, we cannot fully comprehend just how much love God has for us, and we cannot comprehend the infinite riches of God’s grace with our finite minds. What we can do, though, is to “unsay” what we think we know about God, all of the limits we try to place on God, and experience God’s overflowing love.

The best way I have ever found to truly experience that love is through other people. I can point to two somewhat mystical God experiences. One was in a worship service with probably a hundred people, and one was sitting on my couch with a friend. Beyond that, the times I have witnessed the kingdom of God were when I was surrounded by people who were experiencing true community, authentically expressing themselves, and affirming and supporting one another. That is the gift of the Trinity, overflowing love that binds us to one another and allows us to embrace our identity as beloved children of God, Christ’s siblings.

So tell me, what does green look like? Words fail. Just as our words about God fail. Our faith should rest not on human wisdom, but on the power of God. Our metaphors, our analogies, and our stories can point us towards God, though, and help us to live together as members of God’s family, loving one another through the overflowing love of the Godhead. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 1, 2025. Based on John 17:20-26.

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I’d like to start by situating this passage in the story of Jesus’s life and ministry as related in the Gospel of John. The first half of John’s Gospel is the Book of Signs, in which Jesus performs seven major miracles. This passage comes during the shift to the Book of Glory, which culminates in Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.

A few chapters earlier, Jesus and his disciples gather for a Passover meal. At the start, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet as a prophetic action to demonstrate what love means and how love acts. Judas departs to betray him, and then Jesus begins his farewell discourse. Today’s passage is the last part of his high priestly prayer that concludes the discourse before they all depart for the garden of Gethsemane. This is one of the major examples of Jesus showing us how to pray. He earnestly asks God the Father to unify all of God’s people. This passage is very mystical—Jesus prays that the Father would be in the Son as the Son is in the Father as both are in the disciples and the disciples are in them. Wow! How do we make sense of that? This can only be true if we are all bound together by the Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus promises at the beginning of his farewell discourse.

The Gospels are stories of Jesus’s life, but they are more than that. They are stories told to specific communities who were trying to figure out how to follow Jesus. The first Christians were Jews who believed that Jesus had come to reform Judaism. Eventually, though, they realized that Jesus’s message of hope, peace, and love was meant for more than just Jews. Peter had a vision that opened his mind and his heart to Gentiles, and subsequently Paul was commissioned specifically to take the Gospel message to Gentiles around the Roman Empire.

One of the hallmarks of the early church was its diversity. Traditionally, religious communities were ethnically segregated. Each community had its patron god or gods and its own worship practices. In a sense, the Jews were no different—they just thought that their God was supreme over all other gods, or that the other people’s gods were not real. So no matter where they lived, they cleaved to the one true God. For this reason, Jews and Christians were sometimes accused of being atheists because they didn’t worship the local idols, the local gods. If something bad happened to a city, it must have been because the Jews hadn’t properly sacrificed to the patron gods. That led to persecution throughout the Greco-Roman world.

Anyway, pre-Christian religions were segregated by ethnicity and, to some extent, by class. Christianity was different. They welcomed people of any ethnicity, any gender, any social class. Take the Ethiopian eunuch for example. Being Ethiopian, he was not fully welcome in the Temple in Jerusalem. Being a eunuch and likely a slave, he was definitely not welcome in the Temple and would not have been welcome in many social and religious settings. Yet when he encountered Philip on the road as he was heading home from Jerusalem, Philip baptized him and welcomed him into the Christian family.

Throughout the Roman Empire, Christian churches sprouted and grew. In almost every case, they were “house churches,” which is to say, they were groups of people who would meet at one person’s house to worship and share a meal together—the meal we will share at the Lord’s Table in a few minutes. Inviting someone into your house is far different from inviting someone to a public place like a church. I mean, if you are out in public and start chatting with a stranger about religion, you would surely feel more comfortable inviting them to worship with you than to come to your house for a cup of coffee. Yet the house churches were very welcoming to people of all different backgrounds. Generally, groups gathered in the homes of the well-to-do so that there would be enough room for everyone, yet even slaves were welcome and treated as equals. Although later church hierarchy would exclude women from leadership, these house churches were frequently led by women, which makes sense when you consider the typical role of women in managing household affairs and offering hospitality.

Not only were the house churches welcoming of a wide range of people, the Christians actively loved their community, those outside their church. One of the primary contributions of the Christian church is the invention of the hospital. Before the fourth century, physicians treated patients in their homes and would stick to their own people. Then Christians began opening hospitals that welcomed anyone, Christian or not, from any class or ethnicity. The open-heartedness of early Christianity goes a long way towards explaining how it grew from a minor sect of a minor religion into the dominant religion in the Greco-Roman world.

Still today, Christians seek to love those who are outside their immediate circle. A few weeks ago, I related a short story about Carol Mayorga, an immigrant who is being detained. Let me expand on that just a bit. Carol, whose legal name is Ming Li Hui, went to St. Louis for what she thought was a routine visa renewal. Instead, she was arrested by ICE and transferred to Phelps County Jail. A group in Rolla called Abide in Love has been tracking the ICE detainees in our jail. My friend Lucy had specifically been in touch with Carol. Presbyterian pastor Kirsten King from Carol’s hometown of Kennett, MO, reached out to our church, so I had a video call with Carol. Since then, Carol has been transferred to Greene County Jail, where she remains. Through it all, Lucy has kept in touch with her and her lawyer. Lucy reached out to NPR, who visited Kennett and wrote a great article about the situation. Subsequently, the New York Times also wrote an article about her. Lucy has regular video calls with Carol to share God’s love and human connection.

Carol is from Hong Kong originally and is Catholic. Why did a Presbyterian pastor contact us? Why is my Episcopalian friend staying in touch with her? Because we are all one humanity. Christ told us to love one another. He didn’t say that we should only love those who love us, or only those who share our values or our community or anything else. He said that we should love our neighbor AND our enemy.

For a couple of months, I was participating in a book study that Patrick Wilson led at his church, CrossRoads. Through that, I learned about two types of churches: a bounded set and a centered set. In a bounded set, there is a clear boundary between who is “in” and who is “out.” For example, in many churches, there are pretty firm rules about who is and is not allowed to take communion. In many churches, there are pretty firm rules about who is allowed to serve in a leadership role. In many churches, there are pretty firm rules about who is considered worthy of membership and who is not. I would say that in the Presbyterian church, the boundary is a little bit porous, but there definitely is a boundary. We allow anyone to take communion, and there are no classifications of people who are disallowed from membership or leadership, but you do have to subscribe to certain beliefs to become a member and then be chosen to be a leader.

In a centered set, there is a clear center, and then there are people who are closer to or further from the center, and either moving towards or away from the center. That’s the kind of church Jesus is describing. The center is LOVE. The center is the mutual love of God the Father and God the Son, who are in one another and whose love flows out and fills the cosmos. Near the center are people like Jesus’s disciples: those who truly know Christ and have given their whole selves to serving God’s kingdom. That’s what God desires for all of us. But most of us aren’t there yet. The most we can hope is that we are moving towards Christ and His love as the source of our being.

Jesus describes an existence of complete unity as another aspect of the kingdom of God. Someday, we will achieve complete unity. In the meantime, as we move deeper into Christ’s love, we move towards fuller inclusion and fuller belonging. Inclusion is an open door: All are welcome. No longer do we have ushers who act like bouncers to keep out certain people. Everyone can come in, sit down, and join us in worship. Belonging takes that to a higher level, though. On a website called Inclusion Geeks, I found this description:

Understanding the difference between inclusion and belonging is crucial because focusing solely on inclusion can create a hollow feeling. Imagine inviting someone to a party but then leaving them standing awkwardly in the corner. They’re technically included, but they don’t truly belong. Focusing only on inclusion might bring diverse individuals into the organization, but without belonging, they may feel isolated, unheard, and ultimately disengaged.

Inclusion is opening the door. Belonging requires building genuine relationships, empowerment, trust, and psychological comfort. Belonging rests on celebrating differences, not minimizing them. We are all beloved children of God, made in God’s image. Yet we all express a different facet of God’s infinite being. Only by celebrating the many faces of humanity can we truly experience God’s presence in and among us.

And that celebration must be active. It isn’t enough to sit quietly in your pew and think positive thoughts about people who are different from you. Instead, we must actively engage with people who are outside our family circle, our friend circle, and our church circle. We must seek out new experiences, new people, different ways of being, and different perspectives.

Our church is a microcosm of the Christian church in America. We are all at a crossroads. For the past 500 years, we have split repeatedly over differences in theology, different ways of understanding God’s calling, different views on who is welcome and who is fit to lead. The process has accelerated in the past fifty years, with the predictable result that succeeding generations are rejecting all of it. If we can’t get our act together and center ourselves on the Truth, God’s Truth, which is LOVE, then why should anyone outside the church care what we have to say? If church is a place where people encounter conflict, or shame, or trauma, why would anyone join? If what we say we believe doesn’t match the truth of our actions, why should anyone trust us?

The only way forward and the only hope for the Christian Church is to live what Jesus commanded his disciples and pray as he prayed: that we may all be one, that we may dwell in God the Father and God the Son and that they may dwell in us. Then empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can exhibit the kingdom of God to the world, the love that unites all of humanity as God’s people.

Jesus described a grand vision for the kingdom of God: complete unity. This unity is based not on sameness, but on the foundation of God’s love in Christ. As we widen the circle of who we call neighbor, who we call friend, who we call sibling in Christ, we move deeper into the infinite love that Christ offers us all. Amen.

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Preached May 18, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Revelation 21:1-8.

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I don’t usually preach from Revelation. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever preached from Revelation. I’m no fire-and-brimstone preacher. But I take what the lectionary gives me. I could have preached about love from the Gospel of John. I could have preached about inclusion from the Acts of the Apostles. But you’ve heard all that from me before, right? So today, you’re getting some apocalyptic preaching. 

Before I get into the reading, let’s try to get the perspective of the original readers of Revelation. John of Patmos was probably not the same John who was an apostle, nor the John who wrote the Gospel that bears that name, nor the John who wrote the epistles that bear that name… Anyway, John the Revelator was exiled to the island of Patmos sometime late in the first century CE, probably around the year 95. This is about 25 years after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the 60s, there was a lot of turmoil in Jerusalem, culminating in a revolution that was absolutely squashed by the Romans. In 70 CE, the Temple was destroyed and Jews were all banished from Jerusalem. Without the Temple, all those who followed our God had to figure out what God had in mind for them. 

One group, the Pharisees, determined that the Temple sacrificial system could be replaced by the many traditions that had grown up in the synagogues. Out of that group grew rabbinic Judaism, the Jewish faith that continues today. 

Another group saw an altogether different vision of the future. Of course the Temple had been destroyed—God no longer needed a dwelling place on earth. Jesus Christ had come to show us God’s essential nature, and then through his death and resurrection, he established a new Way to follow God. In fact, they called themselves followers of the Way. They envisioned a God who transcended any particular place, and indeed one who transcended any tribe or nation. Out of this group grew Christianity in all its varied forms. 

But remember, many Christians saw themselves as still Jews who had grown in their understanding of God. John of Patmos was thoroughly Jewish. Throughout the book of Revelation and especially in today’s passage, there are references to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and other books in our canon, plus many extra-biblical books like 1 Enoch. John was immersed in apocalyptic messianic Judaism and wove its themes all through his writing. 

What was John’s ultimate goal in writing? Well, the core message of Revelation is this: In the end, GOD WINS. Things may look dire—God’s people may be subjected to persecution and the Temple may have been destroyed, but God is at work battling evil and transforming the world. There is always reason for hope. 

In today’s passage, we read that a new heaven and a new earth is descending because the old things had passed away. God is transforming the world into God’s eternal kingdom, which as I have so often said is an existence of universal human flourishing. Most days, it’s hard to see a path from where we are to such an existence. There are so many terrible things happening in the world—how could we ever reach universal flourishing? Well, those old things need to pass away. There are lots of good things in the world, too—but the good is bound up with the bad, often inextricably so. We need to be willing to let go of everything, good and bad, for the sake of God’s kingdom. Only then can we achieve the transformative restoration of all things that is needed to achieve God’s original vision for humanity. 

As the new heaven and new earth are descending, so too is a new Jerusalem, a new holy city. In these last chapters of the Bible, we hear echoes of the first chapters of the Bible. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Christ was there at the beginning, when God spoke all things into being and declared them very good. Christ will be there at the end, too, when all things will be restored to that state of perfection, of wholeness and holiness. 

In the beginning, God placed humanity in a garden. Back then, all we needed was the bare minimum to survive. At first, there was only one human, but God recognized that Adam was incomplete in himself. Being made in the image of God, we are made for relationship. Adam needed a mate, a helper, a companion. Only a loving relationship can really make us complete. 

But no single person can satisfy all of our needs. Many marriages have failed because one person relied too completely on the other and became emotionally unsatisfied. This is no criticism of the other partner—nobody is perfect and therefore nobody can satisfy all of another person’s needs. Similarly, no relationship is pure and untarnished. When you are close to someone, you two can hurt each other because humans are finite, imperfect beings. 

And so a garden is not sufficient for a person to thrive, and a single partner is not sufficient for the pair to thrive. We need a community. We need to be embedded in a complex web of relationships that are individually good, and together provide everything we need to flourish. Metaphorically, we need a city, a Holy City, a place where God dwells and unites us all and ensures the health of every relationship. 

We need a Holy City where everyone we love is there with us. Death will be no more, and neither will there be mourning or crying. This is only possible if absolutely everyone is there with us. If I get to heaven and my Grandma or my Uncle Dick aren’t there, it won’t feel very heavenly. 

The problem is, if everyone I love is there, everyone I hate will be there too. There are people who have hurt me over the years, old pains that sometimes flare up, things that cannot be resolved in the present age. There are surely people that I have hurt. Someday, all of the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain we have inflicted on one another will be healed so that we can be reconciled to one another. Only through that reconciliation will we be able to truly enjoy God’s presence. Only through that reconciliation will the world be truly transformed into God’s kingdom. 

But there are at least two main parts to reconciliation. First, the transgressor needs to be reformed. Here’s where the fire and brimstone come in. In Revelation 21:8, we read, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” That sounds pretty bad, right? I mean, I’m not a murderer, but who among us has never lied? Who among us has never acted cowardly? This seems to doom everyone, or almost everyone, to eternal conscious torment in a lake of fire. Or the slightly more positive interpretation is annihilation: those who don’t make the cut to enter the Holy City are annihilated and cease to exist. 

But again, if I get to heaven and the people I love aren’t there, what kind of heaven would that be? The third way to interpret this passage harkens back to Malachi 3:2-3: “But who can endure the day of [the Lord’s] coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.” The fire and brimstone are not to destroy or torment us, but to purify us. This vivid metaphor helps us to understand the pain that comes from confronting the many ways we have fallen short of God’s glory and failed to show our love of God or our love of our neighbor. This reckoning will be painful, but is necessary to purify us and to remove from us all of our hatred and all of the ways we hurt one another. Then we can truly repent and, having repented, we can truly reconcile with those whom we have hurt, or those who have hurt us. 

And then, all will be well. Fernando Sabino, a Brazilian writer, once wrote, “In the end, everything will be all right. If it’s not all right, it’s not the end.” Until we have all been purified and reconciled with one another, it is still not the end. God will keep working on us, individually and collectively, until everyone is flourishing. God will keep transforming the world until it truly reflects God’s vision for humanity. 

We might wish that we wouldn’t need to go through all of this. The pain and loss of the present age lead to mourning and tears, but Christ promises that in the end, mourning and crying shall be no more. Julian of Norwich, a famous 14^th-century visionary, wrote this about her 13^th Showing: 

In my folly, before this time I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the onset of sin was not prevented: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This impulse [of thought] was much to be avoided, but nevertheless I mourned and sorrowed because of it, without reason and discretion. 

But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ 

These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.

Jesus doesn’t blame us for our sinfulness and imperfections. He was one of us and so he knows how hard this life is.  We accumulate pain and sorrow throughout the length of our days, but we know that in the end, all shall be well. 

OK, great—someday, we’ll all be in heaven and all shall be well. You should know me well enough, though, to know that I’m not here to promise you pie in the sky when you die in the sweet by and by.  

The core message of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! Yes, in the end, all shall be well, but we can have glimpses of what that will be like as the world is slowly transformed. Because the new heaven and the new earth and the new Jerusalem are coming to us. They come to us each day as we strive to create a world that is more aligned with God’s original intention for universal human flourishing. We are living in the Holy City right now. It’s here. It’s within us and among us. 

Sure, we still hurt one another, and we are still finite and imperfect beings. But we have been made in God’s image, and that means we have the capacity within ourselves to express God’s love. We have the ability to forgive, and to repent, and to reconcile with one another. It doesn’t happen very often, but once in a while, I get a sense that I am living in God’s kingdom, if only for a moment or perhaps an afternoon. Once in a while, I have a feeling that God loves me, and that God has connected me with the people around me. I get a feeling that everyone has what they need to flourish, to live out their true identity as a beloved child of God. That feeling passes quickly, but it’s real, and it assures me that indeed, all shall be well. 

The task God sets before each one of us is to find ways to transform the world into God’s kingdom. God works with us and through us as we strive to purge ourselves of evil and hatred. God works with us and through us as we strive to share God’s love with our community, to love as we are loved. God works with us and through us as we seek to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and bind up the broken-hearted. 

Someday, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Today, let us strive to make Rolla just a little bit more like God’s vision for humanity. Let us seek ways to help everyone flourish and thrive. In that way, we will live in God’s kingdom today and walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called. Amen.  

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Preached on May 11, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on John 10:22-30.

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This passage opens by putting us in a certain place at a certain time. Jesus is in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon, during the Festival of Dedication. We normally call this holiday something else: Hanukkah. It is also sometimes called the Festival of Lights. It is the major Jewish holiday that was created most recently.

Let me take you back to the time of the Maccabees. In 167 BCE, Judea was under the control of the Seleucid Empire. The emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes ordered the desecration of the Temple. He had an altar to Zeus erected and ordered pigs—the most unclean of animals—to be sacrificed on the existing altar. This action provoked a revolt that succeeded in 164 BCE.

So, the Jews had re-captured the Temple, but it was still desecrated. The altar had to be re-built, and then they had to light the menorah. Unfortunately, all of the oil available had been defiled, and it would take eight days to make and purify new oil. Miraculously, one day’s worth of oil lasted all eight days. Maimonides, also called the Rambam, one of the greatest rabbis of the Middle Ages, wrote:

When, on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the Jews had emerged victorious over their foes and destroyed them, they re-entered the Temple where they found only one jar of pure oil, enough to be lit for only a single day; yet they used it for lighting the required set of lamps for eight days, until they managed to press olives and produce pure oil. Because of this, the sages of that generation ruled that the eight days beginning with the twenty-fifth of Kislev should be observed as days of rejoicing and praising the Lord. Lamps are lit in the evening over the doors of the homes, on each of the eight nights, so as to display the miracle. These days are called Hanukkah, when it is forbidden to lament or to fast, just as it is on the days of Purim. Lighting the lamps during the eight days of Hanukkah is a religious duty imposed by the sages.

So, Jesus is in the Temple that had been consecrated miraculously by a light that did not fail. But we know that Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, the Light that will never fail. He came to his own people at this auspicious time to remind them that the Light comes from God the Father, and that he is of one essence with the Father.

This event occurs pretty close to the end of Jesus’s ministry. Throughout the Gospel of John, there is a succession of “signs,” miracles that indicate Jesus’s divine nature. At this late juncture, his opponents are still trying to figure out just who he is and what he’s going to do. So they ask him to state plainly whether or not he is the Messiah. I think the context of the question, being asked in the Temple during Hanukkah, helps us to understand just what they were asking.

The Jews were an oppressed nation. In 63 BCE, they became a client state of the Romans, and then lost all independence in 37 BCE. They looked back to their freedom that preceded the Romans and yearned for a savior who would return them to those glory days. Remember that in 586 BCE, Judah was conquered by the Babylonians and remained a conquered nation for centuries. As I said a few minutes ago, by 167 BCE, they were ruled by the Seleucid Empire. King Antiochus IV Epiphanes began persecuting Jewish practices and ultimately desecrated the Temple. Mattathias, a priest, was commanded by some soldiers to perform a sacrifice to the Greek gods in his home village, but instead he resisted and killed one of the Seleucid officials. This began a rebellion, led by Mattathias and his sons. When Mattathias was killed in 166 BCE, his third son Judah took command. He was nicknamed HaMakabi  or “The Hammer.” Judah Maccabee went on to defeat the Seleucid army and took Jerusalem on the 25^th of Kislev, December 14, 164 BCE.

So the Jews were gathered in the Temple to celebrate a great military victory, led by someone apparently designated by God to liberate God’s people from a foreign occupying army. Just as Judah Maccabee freed Judea from Seleucid rule and re-consecrated the Temple, the Jews were seeking a Messiah who would lead them to victory over the Romans, free them from oppression, and purify the Temple. This is the context for the question: Are you the Messiah?

Jesus says, in effect, Yes, I am, but not the kind of Messiah you are expecting! Jesus’s actions, the six great signs reported in the Gospel of John up to this point as well as many others that weren’t recorded, demonstrated his divine nature and his earthly mission. He came not to destroy, but to build up. He came to feed the poor, heal the sick, and free the prisoner. He came to bring forth God’s kingdom, not through force but through love.

Today is sometimes called Good Shepherd Sunday. When Jeff changed the anthem, I said, “Yeah, I was just thinking that the liturgy and music was a little light on allusions to sheep and shepherds.” Sheep and shepherds are common motifs throughout the Bible. God has been likened to a shepherd since at least the time of David, who wrote that “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Modern Americans don’t have a lot of experience with sheep, so I looked up the kinds of things a shepherd does to care for their sheep:

• Planning for where to graze the sheep, to ensure access to good food and water—still water because sheep are afraid of moving water.
• Finding supplemental hay etc. during times of scarcity.
• Protecting the flock from predators.
• Herding the flock together so they can be protected from harm.
• Separating out sheep who are causing problems, or who need special attention due to illness or injury.

Through it all, shepherds develop a close, personal bond with their sheep. It is true that sheep know their shepherd’s voice and follow it. Jesus calls us to follow him in what he does. We have been chosen to be a part of his flock, and in turn he protects us and cares for us. Jesus’s contemporaries were looking for a strong leader to lead a pack of wolves against the Romans, but God chose instead a Good Shepherd to guide a flock of sheep. In this passage and others, Jesus promises to always be with us, to care for us and protect us and guide us, to restore our souls, to leads us in paths of righteousness. Jesus promises that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Out of gratitude for this love and care and protection and guidance, we are called to live out our lives as Jesus’s sheep. What does that mean? Well, let’s turn to another famous passage in Matthew 25. When the King comes in his glory, he will separate people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. To the sheep he says, “Come, inherit the kingdom, for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” When did the righteous do this? Just as they did to one of the least of his brothers and sisters, they did it to Jesus.

This is what it means to be a sheep of Jesus’s fold. We are called to pursue Jesus’s righteousness and do as he did, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger. As I have said so often, the core of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! Our King comes not only at the end of the age, but each day in the oppressed and forgotten and marginalized people of this age. God’s kingdom is an existence of universal human flourishing. It is shalom, a peace that transcends an absence of conflict and encompasses wholeness, completeness, perfection. As the body of Christ, we are called to exhibit the kingdom of God here and now.

The Matthew 25 initiative from PC(USA) is built on three pillars: building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism, and eradicating systemic poverty. Each congregation that signs on to become a Matthew 25 congregation needs to live out one or more of these pillars in its local context. Given what I know from having been in this church for 17 years and having spoken with about ¼ of the members, I believe we are well-positioned to address poverty. This pillar is described on the PC(USA) site like this:

Eradicating systemic poverty involves addressing the root causes of economic inequality and providing support to those in need. Through advocacy, service, and partnership, we work to create just systems and opportunities for all people to thrive.

I would say that we do an excellent job of meeting today’s needs. We support the Mission, GRACE, and Russell House with our time, talent, and treasure. Through them, we help individuals escape poverty and abusive circumstances. I think we should keep doing what we’re doing in this area, and expand as we are able.

But where we fall short is in addressing the root causes of poverty. The Mission recently posted a few reasons why people are homeless. Top reasons include: a lack of affordable housing—even in Rolla!; lack of a living wage; escaping domestic violence; medical debt; and mental illness, often related to PTSD or childhood trauma. I don’t know what I can do about any of these on my own, so I cook lunch once a week and hope that helps a little bit. As a congregation, though, we have a lot of resources. I’m not talking about money or space. I’m talking about people, smart and caring people, people who have time and social capital that can impact society.

Recently, a group started up in Rolla called Voters for Informed Action, which among other things has engaged in a letter-writing campaign and hosted a town hall. There is a separate but related group called Abide in Love that is supporting ICE detainees in the Phelps County Jail. These are things that any of us can do. The point is to pick something that enough people care about, then get together and DO SOMETHING.

And it doesn’t have to be big and earth-shaking. Here’s a story from PC(USA) about one congregation’s Matthew 25 efforts, published about a year ago:

The Mission Team at Calvary Presbyterian Church recently decided to donate funds for a new commercial stove and convection oven for the Chevy Chase Center. Their current, residential-style, donated stoves were no longer holding temperature and were becoming dangerous. It was hard for us on the Mission Team to see this organization that has given so much to our community just limping along.

Recently, the stove and oven were delivered and installed, and a few of our team members, along with some of the Chevy Chase Board members, gathered to celebrate!

This is a case where a church invested in some capital that will enable an organization to serve the poor for many years to come. Another story I read described a project that investigated the needs of various poor families in their rural area and bought them things like refrigerators and stoves. What good is fresh food if you do not have a reliable refrigerator? What good are ingredients if you have no way to cook them? Without a stove and refrigerator, many families would need to buy ready-to-eat food, which is usually less nutritious and more expensive.

See, solving the problem of poverty is too big a problem for us to solve on our own, but God amplifies whatever we do, combines it with the efforts of like-minded individuals and congregations and organizations, and little by little, establishes the kingdom of God.

So, what can we do? Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Do you hear his voice? Do you hear him calling from the margins? What is he calling you to do, and what is he calling us all to do together? Jesus was not a military leader like Judah Maccabee, Judah the Hammer. He was the Prince of Peace and the Light of the world who came so that all might have abundant life. Let us seek together a way to foster God’s kingdom, to foster universal human flourishing, or at least a little more flourishing here in Rolla among the poor, neglected, and abused. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025. Based on John 20:1-18. I am indebted to Amy Evans whose Substack, “This Prayer Meeting Should Have Been a Fistfight,” introduced me to Jesus Points.

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I’d like to congratulate you all on earning 100 Jesus Points today. What are Jesus Points, you may ask? Well, you’ve probably never been taught about them, but you probably live by them, like most Christians.

I read about Jesus Points recently and felt compelled to teach you all about them. Don’t worry about taking notes; I’ll post this sermon online so you can refer back to it later. See, you earn 100 Jesus Points for coming to worship on Easter, 75 for coming to worship on Christmas Eve. A normal Sunday is 10; if you take communion, too, it bumps up to 15. Special services like Maundy Thursday are 20.

But you can lose Jesus Points, too. A few years ago, I was in a rough place mentally and emotionally. Rhonda and I went out to lunch after Easter service with Bob and Carlene, and I was kind of mean to the waitress. Being mean to servers is minus-20 points, and doing it on Sunday doubles that. Doing it on Easter quadruples it, I think.

So to make it up, I read my Bible a little extra. That’s one point each time you read it. You get another point if you pray, but you lose a point instead if you pray selfishly for something good to happen to you at someone else’s expense.

Those aren’t the only ways to earn or lose Jesus Points, though. Believing the wrong thing about salvation is an automatic minus-1000 points. Teaching someone else the wrong theology is minus-10,000. Boy, I really need to be careful up here.

If you marry a Christian, that’s plus-1000, but if you marry an atheist, that’s minus-1000. But then if you can get the atheist to come to church, even if they don’t believe, that gets cancelled out.

If you successfully evangelize and get someone to accept Jesus in their heart, that’s plus-5000. But of course, if you get them to believe the wrong thing, the minus-10,000 kicks in.

Oh, and don’t get me started on all the things you can do to earn or lose points at work, or by voting, or with your money. Are you spending your time and money in ways that glorify God? Or in ways that enrich you personally? But what if they do both? It gets super confusing.

Does this all sound familiar? You’ve probably never had a preacher spell it out for you, but I bet you’ve encountered someone who seemed to be helping you keep track of your Jesus Points, right? They might have commended you for giving to charity, or chided you for something you said or did. But here’s the thing: it’s all a lie. Just like Drew Carey said to open Whose Line Is It Anyway? Everything is made up and the points don’t matter. I’ll say it again: Jesus Points are made up and they just don’t matter!

There are lots of theories about what happened on the cross exactly, but I know this for certain: Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection put an end to this kind of recordkeeping FOREVER. Jesus came to reconcile us to God. No longer do we need to make sacrifices to satisfy God. No longer do we need to worry about which sins are worse than others. No longer do we need to live in fear of eternal damnation over something we did or failed to do. We have been reconciled to God through Jesus’s once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. Easter is the proof that even death has lost its sting.

Hear me again: There is no such thing as Jesus Points. You do not need to keep track of whether you’ve done enough good, or if you’ve committed some sin against God that might be unforgivable. There is nothing you can do to separate yourself from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing. No matter what, God loves you! No matter what, you are welcome in God’s kingdom! The scandal of the Gospel is that there’s no such thing as “too much grace.” Through Christ, God offers grace upon grace upon grace!

So if you don’t have to earn Jesus Points, why do good? Why not just live a carefree life, with no respect for anyone or anything? If, as I believe, we are all destined for the eternal joy of God’s presence, why not have some sinful fun now?

Well, we have been freed of sin, guilt, and especially shame so that we can continue Jesus’s work. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Why? To be the light of the world, to show us the Truth with a capital T, to show us how to live. Jesus came to initiate the total transformation of the world into God’s kingdom. When he spoke of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, he wasn’t talking so much about what happens when you die, but instead he was telling us what would happen if we truly live. If we embrace his teachings and seek universal human flourishing, we will experience the kingdom of God in this age, not just in the age to come.

Jesus came to reconcile us with God. That much is true. But if we are reconciled to God, shouldn’t we seek to further God’s work in the world? This isn’t like paying God back for the work Jesus did. This is responding out of love.

When you love someone, your natural response is to want the best for them, and to want to help them in whatever they are trying to accomplish. Have you ever had a close friend ask you to support an organization that they were a part of? Maybe you didn’t care too much about the particular cause that they were pushing, but because of your love for your friend, you would support what they care about. True love is desiring the other person to thrive, to flourish, to reach their full potential, to achieve their goals. Well, loving God is expressed by helping to build God’s kingdom. Jesus came to preach forgiveness, to preach reconciliation in all relationships, to break down artificial barriers between individuals and tribes and nations, to restore outcasts to full participation in the community. Jesus came to heal the sick and free the prisoner. Jesus came to provide for everyone. If you love Jesus, you should desire to continue this work. If your efforts are unsuccessful, well, that’s OK. You are not the Messiah, just someone trying to help him. We will all fall short of what God asks us to do. I’m reminded of Micah 6:8:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

We should strive to act with justice, which in this case has a sense like restoring wholeness rather than pursuing retribution. We should highly value mercy, seeking reconciliation rather than punishment. And above all, we should walk with humility as we seek God’s guidance. Where pride is concerned with who is right, humility is concerned with what is right (Ezra T. Benson). I cannot claim to know the will of God, at least not in any detail. We should all recognize our limitations as finite human beings. We cannot know God’s designs for our lives or our community or our world. All we can do is act from a place of love and put our trust in God to guide our actions.

In this way, we can cultivate a world that more nearly approaches God’s kingdom. In many of Jesus’s parables about the kingdom of God, there was something organic about it. A mustard seed that became a large shrub, for example. The world will not become God’s realm overnight, but through steady, persistent effort, we can shape the world into a more just, more merciful society that enables everyone—everyone—to flourish and thrive.

You might be thinking, wait a minute—I thought I came to church this morning to earn my Jesus Points! And now I hear that they’re not a real thing? So why am I here? Well, let’s turn back to the lesson for the day. Mary Magdalene is despondent. She had lost her dear friend and teacher. She goes to Jesus’s tomb, hoping to mourn there, and finds the tomb empty! Now remember, nobody expected this. Nobody in first-century Galilee or Judea expected a Messiah who would be killed by the occupying Roman government, so everyone thought that Jesus’s death on the cross was the ignominious end of his movement. They certainly didn’t expect him to rise from the dead.

So Mary is even more distraught. Not only is her dear friend dead, but his body is gone! The disciples are no help, either; they look in the tomb, see that it’s empty, and go back home to hide. They’re probably scared of the Roman authorities. But Mary stays faithful to the end. She stays at the tomb where she can mourn. She keeps looking for her dear friend. Then the pivotal moment: Jesus calls her by name, and she sees her risen Lord, and exclaims, “Rabbouni! My Teacher!”

Mary encountered our risen Lord. This is the moment that began the transformation of Jesus’s followers from one more failed messianic movement that, as usual, ended in bloodshed, into a movement that would change the world. This is the moment that taught us all that Jesus had conquered sin and death once and for all. Empowered by her encounter, Mary rallied the disciples.

This is why we’re here. We come to worship together to encounter God. We surround ourselves with and embed ourselves in the body of Christ, which is the Church. We see God in each other through the love of God that we share. We are connected to something bigger than ourselves through the power of the liturgy, the prayers, and the music. Then, empowered by this encounter, we can go forth to transform the world into God’s kingdom.

Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection put an end to all accounting for our sins. He came so that we might have abundant life, a life free of guilt or shame, a life where we can confidently seek to build a better world, one that is more like God’s kingdom in which everyone can flourish. We come together today to encounter our risen Lord to be empowered to do His work today, this week, and throughout our lives.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! And he is present within each one of us and within us all together, guiding and strengthening us as we build his kingdom. Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on April 6, 2025, Fifth Sunday in Lent. Based on John 12:1-8.

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Today is the Fifth Sunday in Lent, so we are nearing the end. Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, then we have Holy Week, and Easter. Our reading today also comes near the end—the end of Jesus’s ministry.

The Gospel of John can be divided roughly in half. The first twelve chapters are called the Book of Signs because they contain seven miracles, called “signs” by the author, of increasing impact. From the changing of water into wine to the raising of Lazarus, Jesus demonstrates that He is God. Soon after today’s reading is Jesus’s triumphant entry on Palm Sunday. Then chapter 13 starts the Book of Glory, narrating his last days on earth. So today’s lesson is the turning point, where Jesus has demonstrated who he is but has not yet demonstrated what that means.

Back in chapter 11, we have the greatest sign in the Gospel. Mary and Martha had a brother, Lazarus, who had died. While he was still sick, they sent for Jesus, but Jesus delayed his coming until after Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. When he finally arrives, Martha chastises him a little, even though she acknowledged the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God who is coming into the world. But Mary is despondent. She has lost her dear brother and cannot imagine a future. Jesus raises Lazarus and restores the family to wholeness.

Time is a strange thing. We are slaves to chronos, the time that we measure on our watches. Some of you are gloriously free from the tyranny of the clock, but I am still bound to it. I have my Outlook calendar set to give me reminders of where I’m supposed to be when, and honestly, I’m a little too diligent about it. I get anxious when I’m late or, God forbid, miss an appointment. Each night, I use my Monk Manual to review the day that has passed and plan my next day. I fill out the timeline to make sure I am prepared for what is coming, and figure out what tasks I can achieve during the pieces of time that are free.

Pre-industrial societies were less bound to a clock and more bound to the sun. Still, they had a sense that there were things that needed to be done at certain times. Judas was bound to chronos time, and was well aware that time is money. He knew that there were certain tasks that needed to be completed, including giving alms.

Greeks had another word for time, though, too: kairos. Kairos has a bit of a sense like “timely.” Like, the right time, or an auspicious time. In kairos time, some moments or seasons have more significance.

While Judas was bound to chronos, Mary was aware of kairos. She knew that something special and important was happening. It was like all the past had gone away and all the future didn’t matter. All that mattered was right then, being in Jesus’s presence, giving her whole devotion to him. She sensed that time was all compressed, from Lazarus’s death to his resurrection to Jesus’s presence in her home to his coming departure. She sensed that this moment would never come again.

So she did the only thing she could. Like her sister, Mary knew that Jesus was the Messiah, anointed by God, but had not been anointed by humanity. She knew that he was with her right then, but soon would be gone from her life forever. So she gave him all that she had.

Mary had a jar of pure nard, which is a perfumed ointment. Judas claims that it was worth 300 denarii, which is roughly a year’s wages for a laborer. A year’s wages! The average wage in Missouri is roughly $50,000 a year, so imagine—a jar of ointment worth $50,000 that Mary just pours out on Jesus’s feet! And not only that, but she wipes his feet with her hair. I sometimes picture my friend Sharon here. She has shorter hair now, but used to have hair down almost to her waist. Mary would have needed hair that long to be able to wipe Jesus’s feet with it. This in a culture where women usually covered their heads. To have her head uncovered was already a sign of intimacy, and to go another step further and use her hair to spread ointment all over Jesus’s feet was a profound act of intimacy. This is the act of a friend, a close friend. For Jesus to have even allowed her to continue must have meant that he treasured Mary deeply. They were already connected on a heart level, the way we all hope to connect to Jesus, and then Mary acted out her devotion to him.

This, to me, is a prophetic statement. This is a sign act. Throughout the Old Testament, there are prophets who perform actions that are a sign of God’s message to the people. For example, Ezekiel baked bread over a fire of dung. Hosea married Gomer, a harlot. Jeremiah smashed a clay vessel in front of the religious leaders, but then later, he bought a field. Most of the sign acts we read about are negative signs, but this last one was a sign that God would restore the people of Judah. God commanded Jeremiah to buy a field in occupied territory to symbolize that Judah would one day be back in control of the land.

Mary’s sign act is one of extravagant gratitude. In one action, she ties together many concepts that flow through the Gospel of John. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, whose feet are even holy. Jesus is the source of life whose abundant grace calls forth abundant gratitude. Jesus is bringing his kingdom into being, but it’s an upside-down kingdom, just as his anointing by Mary is upside-down. And, this bridges the gap between Jesus the healer who can even resuscitate the dead and Jesus the servant who washes his disciples’ feet. Mary’s prophetic action reveals the weakness in Judas while displaying the strength of her commitment.

One of Jesus’s promises is life in abundance. That does not mean a life of abundance, though. I was thinking the other day, what is wealth? What does it mean to be wealthy? It means that you don’t need to consider the cost. If you’re poor, maybe you need to count out the change in your car in order to afford McDonald’s, but if you’re wealthy, you can go to Sonic on a whim without checking your bank account balance. By this measure, Mary was wealthy. I don’t know if she had much money or any land or other resources, but she didn’t have to consider whether or not she could afford to use the pint of nard that she had. Her brother had been lost to her, yet had been restored. Jesus, the man who restored her family to wholeness, was there in her home. She was overwhelmed with gratitude, and reacted with the knowledge that Jesus’s worth far exceeded the value of the nard.

I’m reminded of the parables from Matthew chapter 13, verses 44 through 46. Jesus said, ⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ⁴⁵Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶ on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

The kingdom of God is worth everything. Everything you have, and everything you are. Mary gets it. She knows that nothing she owns is worth as much as Jesus’s presence in her life.

Last week in our book study, we read where Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. This is not a calling to breed smaller camels or build bigger needles. This is a calling for us to let go of whatever prevents us from full participation in God’s realm. When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven, he wasn’t talking about some pie in the sky by and by. He was talking about the here and now. He was talking about His presence in and among us. But each of us has something that holds us back. Many of us are held back by money or possessions. Others are held back by position or status. Still others are held back by their family connections or other relationships. Throughout the Gospels, whenever someone approached Jesus, he identified exactly what was keeping them back from full participation in his movement. For the rich young man, it was money. For others, it was leprosy or another disease that needed to be healed, or a demon that needed to be exorcised. In one case, it was a father’s burial, and in another, it was land and possessions. Whatever it was, Jesus told them to abandon it and follow him.

I’m finishing up a book called Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant. The authors talk about the tribal nature of our modern political system. We have quickly evolved from partisans who think the other party has some good ideas but are more often wrong, into partisans who think the other party is evil and a threat to our nation. You all probably know where I stand on things, but I’ll say that I’m definitely disappointed in the leadership of both parties, or rather the lack of leadership. I’m trying to remember that at the end of the day, I should not be committed to any political party, nor even any nation, but rather to Jesus Christ and God’s kingdom. Among the things that Jesus asks us to give up are our political and other allegiances to worldly things, instead obeying and worshipping God alone. We are all tempted the way Jesus was by the devil during the forty days in the desert that Lent reminds us of. We should all make the same choices—to forsake wealth and power and instead to embrace our citizenship in God’s kingdom.

Or rather, we should embrace our role as a member of the body of Christ. We, the Church—with a capital C—are called to be and to do just what Jesus was and did. Mary showed us how. She gave all that she had for the sake of her devotion to Jesus. We too are called to give all that we have for the sake of Christ’s body, the Church, and its work in the world. In gratitude for the abundant grace poured out upon us, let us seek to give all that we have and all that we are for the establishment of God’s kingdom, a state of being where everyone can flourish and thrive. Amen.

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Sermon for March 30, 2025, Fourth Sunday in Lent, preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32.

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Today’s story is a familiar one. It’s one of the parables we find in Luke that has entered popular culture, just like last week’s story about the Good Samaritan. We refer to the “Prodigal Son” even though we need to look up what “prodigal” means! (By the way, it means spending money or resources freely and recklessly.) The preacher’s challenge is to make something so familiar to us seem new. No promises, but let’s see if we can glean some fresh insights today.

The story starts with a shameful action. In a patriarchal society, a father’s inheritance would be divided among his male heirs at his death, with a larger share going to the first-born son. The younger son could have stayed in his father’s household and eventually inherited an appropriate portion, but he was impatient, like so many young people. He was ready to strike out on his own, get away from his father’s control, live a little. So he asked for his inheritance. This was essentially like saying to his father, “All you mean to me is a payday. I almost wish you were dead. Gimme gimme gimme.” The father could certainly have refused, but he didn’t. I’m sure it broke his heart to lose his son in this way, but he allowed his son to bear the consequences of his choices.

We sometimes say that America has a guilt-innocence paradigm while cultures like in ancient Judea had an honor-shame paradigm. That is, we supposedly look only at whether someone broke a rule or not. But if you think about the way some people are treated, you’ll realize that shame is alive and well in 21^st-century America.

Shame is a way that society has to determine who is valued more and who is valued less, who has more or less status, or who is included or excluded. There are plenty of ways to incur shame. Losing your job, for example. I spoke recently with a former student whose position was eliminated because his employer didn’t have any projects for him. How was that his fault? Yet many prospective employers find that sort of thing to be shameful and are reluctant to hire someone who doesn’t currently have a job. Similar judgment is passed on someone who is homeless. Look around Rolla—there are surely several people who are homeless now, in the wake of the storm. Yet many other people are homeless because of a personal storm in their lives—unemployment, divorce, being a victim of a crime, and so forth.

I recently read about “healthism.” The term was coined in 1980 by Robert Crawford to describe a belief system where health is a function of personal choices. It’s an attitude that ascribes honor to people who are skinny, fit, and active. It ascribes shame to people who are overweight, or have mobility issues, or have chronic diseases, or who otherwise fall outside the bounds of “healthy.” But health is not entirely in our control. Look at Rhonda, for example. Nobody really knows what causes MS, but it certainly is unrelated to any decisions she has ever made.

Relationships are hard, right? Families are challenging. Yet we are expected to have great relationships with our parents, our siblings, our spouse, our kids. Divorce is seen as a failure, and some people will blame parents if their kids don’t live up to some standard of success, or if they get in trouble with the law, or whatever.

I could go on and on. The simple fact is that modern American culture has just as much of an honor-shame binary as ancient Judea, just with different means of gaining honor or incurring shame.

So some people engage in “covering.” I learned about that from a recent podcast. A prime example of covering was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had had polio and needed to use a wheelchair. In that era, polio was relatively common and was certainly not his fault. Everyone knew that he had had polio and that he used a wheelchair. Yet, he went out of his way to ensure that no pictures were ever taken that revealed his wheelchair, and that he wasn’t in a wheelchair during important meetings.

Covering is trying to hide those aspects of yourself that make you feel ashamed. FDR believed that he would not be respected if people saw him in a wheelchair, so he hid his need for it. Other people try to hide their race, their national origin, their education or lack thereof, their family relationships, and so forth. We hide what we believe to be shameful so that we can have a higher status in society. Interestingly, the podcast I listened to indicated that 47% of straight white men—arguably the most honored demographic—engage in covering behaviors.

Today’s lesson is usually called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it is sometimes called the Parable of the Two Brothers. So let’s talk about the older brother. This chapter of Luke opens with an observation that the Pharisees were grumbling over Jesus welcoming “tax collectors and sinners.” The Pharisees were trying to shame Jesus because of the shameful company he kept. At the climax of the chapter, we encounter a man who will not welcome his brother, who will not even acknowledge him as brother but instead as “this son of yours” when he is confronting his father. The modern American church is not so different from the older brother, nor from the Pharisees. I watched a video recently, which I can’t find so I’m trying to reconstruct from memory, about a church in Virginia. I think it was Pentecostal. Anyway, the teenage niece of the pastor got pregnant and was forced to come and be publicly shamed by the congregation during worship.

I would say that we, as a congregation, do better than that, but we are far from perfect. We may not explicitly shun people, but there are definitely behavioral norms that are subtly reinforced by the way we treat each other. I would guess that most of us have some part of our lives that we can’t be fully open about with our church friends. There are some things that we just don’t talk about.

This is actually one of the most critical challenges facing the American church today. One of the top reasons people give for not attending a church is hypocrisy. Outsiders see all the ways that we fall short of what we claim to believe. They see us shaming outsiders while ignoring the sin among ourselves. We must do better, and we must demonstrate to the world that we can do better about welcoming people who are outside of the church.

Because the central message of Luke 15 is the JOY that comes when what was lost is found. First, a shepherd rejoices, not over the 99 sheep he had but over the ONE sheep that was lost but is found. Next, a woman rejoices, not over the 9 coins she has, but over the ONE coin that she had lost but found. Then the father does what nobody in the crowd would expect. His son was lost to him, and indeed had forsaken him. His son treated him as if he were dead and went away. Yet the father was waiting expectantly for his son to return. While his son was still far off—before he could give his prepared speech acknowledging his sin—the father runs out to meet him with open arms.

In the same way, God waits expectantly for us to repent. God waits for us to turn away from sin and towards God’s love. In God’s realm, there is no shame. It doesn’t matter what we have done. What matters is that we turn towards God. What matters is that we choose to receive and dwell in God’s infinite love.

The Presbyterian Church is part of the Reformed branch of theology that is sometimes summarized with the acronym TULIP. The T stands for “total depravity,” the doctrine that all people are inherently sinful and incapable of doing good on their own. I have real trouble believing that. I see too much good in the world to believe that we are all totally depraved. But I can get on board with the I of TULIP: irresistible grace. This is the belief that God’s grace is so powerful that everyone God chooses to receive it cannot ultimately resist it. Instead, the Elect will be eventually, inevitably drawn to Christ.

In God’s realm, there is no shame. There is no shame in admitting that you made a bad decision and choosing to correct it. There is no shame in being a victim of the brokenness of this world. There is no shame in being on the losing end of capitalist competition. There is no shame in terminating unhealthy relationships. There is no shame in falling short of God’s glory, for we all do. There is no shame, only grace.

We have two tasks, then. One is to believe that indeed there is no shame before God, and to approach God through Christ with our whole selves. All the good, the bad, the beauty, and the ugliness within ourselves. We can bring it all to God and let God’s love flow over and through us.

And then, having been empowered by God’s grace, our task is the reconciliation of the world. This is the task that Jesus gave us in the Great Commission, to bring everyone into God’s family. This is the task that runs through the first Great End of the Church: the proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of humankind. The core of the Gospel is that the kingdom of God is at hand! And the kingdom of God is a state of being where everyone can flourish, which means that everyone is connected to each other. In the kingdom of God, all guilt has been erased, and so has all shame. In the kingdom of God, we love God by loving our neighbor. God’s realm has not arrived in all its fullness, but we get glimpses of it when we welcome the stranger and comfort the broken-hearted. We get glimpses of it when we allow someone to bring their whole selves into our fellowship. We get glimpses of it when we eat with the tax collectors and sinners of our modern society, just as our Lord did two thousand years ago.

So today and every day, I wish you grace upon grace, washing away not only your guilt but also your shame. I pray that you will be confident to approach God’s throne of grace with your whole self. And I encourage you all, each one of you, and our church collectively, to live out God’s grace by honoring everyone who seeks to join us in God’s realm. Amen.

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As a postscript, I would like to share an alternative to TULIP that I read a few years ago: the beautiful Gospel of WHEAT:

• W – Wounded children
• H – Human solidarity
• E – Exhaustive reconciliation
• A – Absolute grace
• T – Transformative love

Reading this series of blog posts solidified my theology and its ideas run through much of my preaching and writing.

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Sermon for March 2, 2025, Transfiguration Sunday. Based on Luke 9:28-36.

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The Transfiguration scene is full of symbolism. I can’t possibly get through all of it, but I want to touch on a few aspects that would have been fairly obvious to a first-century Jew. When Jesus is transfigured, he is joined by Moses and Elijah, so let’s talk about who they were.

Moses was an Israelite who had to flee Egypt after committing murder. While he was in the wilderness, he was chosen by God to lead his people to freedom. During the Exodus, he had many encounters directly with God. In the passage we read earlier, the encounter that Moses had left his face glowing, so bright that he had to wear a veil. This wasn’t Moses’s glory; it was God’s glory reflected from him. Throughout the forty years wandering in the wilderness, Moses would speak to God and then carry God’s words to the Israelites.

Among other things, God gave Moses instructions on building the tabernacle, also called the tent of meeting. Honestly, if you ever try to read the Bible front to back, this section is extremely tedious and repetitive, saying the same thing over and over in excruciating detail. Ugh. But finally, the instructions have been given and the tent of meeting has been built. It is time for God to sanctify it. Exodus 40:34-35 reads,

³⁴ Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. ³⁵ Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. 

The cloud was the glory of the Lord, God’s real, physical, tangible presence. Until Jesus came as the incarnation, the Word made flesh, this cloud of the glory of the Lord was the only way the Israelites experienced God in a tangible way.

So Moses led the Israelites out of bondage, guided them to build the tabernacle, made a covenant with God recorded as the Ten Commandments, and approached the Promised Land of Canaan. But God did not allow him to finish the job. Moses was not allowed to enter Canaan, but instead passed the leadership on to Joshua.

A few hundred years later, the Israelites had split into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom, Israel, was ruled by King Ahab and his queen, Jezebel. They worshipped Baal. Elijah was sent to oppose Ahab, Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal. A great battle is recorded in which God decisively demonstrates that Baal is no god and all of Baal’s prophets are killed. Elijah has to flee for his life to Mount Horeb, which we think is the same place where the Ten Commandments were given. There, Elijah encounters God. Refreshed and renewed, he returns to Israel to continue to oppose the kings who are leading the people astray.

Like Moses, though, Elijah was not able to finish the job. He is known as the greatest of the prophets, but his ministry eventually had to end. As he approached the end of his life, he recruited a successor, Elisha. Elijah did not die, but instead was swept up in a whirlwind. There is a tradition that Elijah will return to herald the Messiah.

So here we have Jesus chatting with Moses and Elijah, who we might think of as representing the Law and the Prophets—which is to say, the entirety of the Hebrew Bible. The three of them together represent the revelation of who God is, from the founding of Israel as a nation through to the opening of the messianic age.

Chapter 9 of Luke is the climax of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee. It largely centers around one question: Who is Jesus? Let me give you a thumbnail sketch of this chapter. First, he gave the twelve apostles authority over demons and disease, and then he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God. Next, we hear that Herod is confused because of John the Baptist, who some believe to be the coming of Elijah, which of course would mean that the messianic age is about to begin. After the apostles return, there is an encounter where Jesus feeds 5000 men.

So Jesus has authority that he can delegate, he was preceded by an Elijah figure, and he has power to feed as well as to heal. So when he asks Peter, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Peter gets it right: “You are the Messiah.”

But what kind of Messiah is he? One that will suffer and die. Well that can’t be right. The Messiah is supposed to begin a new age where the nation of Israel will be re-established. All of the other messianic movements in this era took on a militaristic tone and ended in bloodshed—the blood of the supposed messiah and all of his followers. Jesus says yes, there will be bloodshed, but it will be mine alone, and that will be the start of the new age.

This is all quite confusing to the disciples. Nothing that Jesus says makes sense to them. But to be a good leader, show, don’t tell. Jesus had to show them who he really was so maybe they would understand it.

They go up on the mountain, and Jesus is transfigured before them. He is shining forth like Moses. But Moses was glowing in reflection of God’s glory, while Jesus shone forth his own glory. Jesus had to show his chief disciples that yes, he was a good person, and yes, he was the Messiah, but also, he is so much more than that. Fully human, yet fully divine. Jesus was God. JESUS IS GOD. Amen!

Who is Jesus to you? To some, he was a great teacher. Yes, that’s true. He taught many things throughout his life and ministry, and the Sermon on the Mount is possibly the greatest theological statement in any holy book. To some, he was the sinless one whose death sets us free from sin. Yes, that’s true, too. To some in first-century Judea and Galilee, he was a failure. He didn’t expel the Romans or re-establish the kingdom of Israel. I would say that he wasn’t a failure so much as a fulfillment of God’s plans, which were different from human plans. He didn’t meet the people’s expectations, but that’s a criticism of the people, not of Jesus.

Jesus was all of these things. A moral exemplar and a great leader and organizer. But he was more than that. JESUS WAS GOD. JESUS IS GOD. Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, one who came to be in solidarity with all humanity.

And so after he was transfigured to demonstrate his divinity, Jehovah, the first person of the Trinity, appeared. Remember the cloud that filled the tabernacle that Moses built? That same cloud overshadowed Peter, James, and John so that they had a real, tangible encounter with God. And God’s message to them was: Jesus is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him!

So why was Jesus a great teacher and leader? Because he taught with authority, AS GOD. Now the disciples know the Truth, revealed to them in a vision that will sustain them throughout the long, hard journey to Jerusalem and Gethsemane and Golgotha.

But all good things must come to an end. Peter wanted to stay on the mountain with his beloved rabbi and the two greatest men among his ancestors. Jesus says no, we need to get back to work. The messianic age is upon us—the kingdom of God is at hand—but only if we continue to work towards its fulfillment.

They come back down the mountain and find the other disciples struggling. The disciples were trying to exorcise a demon by their own authority, but Jesus says no—you must cast out demons by God’s authority. We can’t do it on our own. We have to be present as channels for God’s power, but that’s all we are—I am not God, you are not God, none of us are God, but all of us can channel God’s love and power to heal the world.

One of the most important tasks of any leader is succession planning. Someday, each one of us must pass the torch to the next generation. I see this on campus. Good department chairs look at their faculty and identify those who have leadership potential, then guide them into experiences that will enable them to grow into the leaders that the university needs. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but if you don’t try, you’ll definitely fail. Anyway, Moses knew that he would not be able to enter the Promised Land, so he kept Joshua close at hand to learn how to be a good leader for the Israelites. Elijah knew his time was growing short, so he recruited Elisha to carry on his battle against Baal and other evil in the land.

Jesus knew that his time was nearing the end. He had done all he could in Galilee and had to go to the heart of Judaism, the Temple in Jerusalem. He knew that when he did, his ministry would end in bloodshed, crucified as a rebel against all that Rome stood for. But he also knew that if that was the end of his movement, all of his work would be for naught. His kingdom had not yet been established.

So, he declared that Peter would be the Rock on which his church would be built. He taught the other disciples so that they could support Peter. He gave them all the vision that they would need to carry on after he departed this earth.

Empowered by the spirit, that’s exactly what they did. Peter eventually became the bishop of Rome. Most of the disciples were martyred, but not before carrying the message of God’s kingdom to the ends of the earth.

Peter was Jesus’s successor, and by extension, so are we all. We have been commissioned to carry on Jesus’s work. We have been commanded to participate in the flourishing of God’s kingdom, which is the transformation of the world into a place where everyone can thrive. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit, who came at Pentecost to encourage the disciples when they felt abandoned and that the future was bleak. That same Spirit encourages us today when we feel like our own future is bleak.

It’s not. The future is filled with Jesus’s radiant presence, if we only look for it. We see Jesus when we open our hearts to one another, when we do as Jesus did—healing the sick, freeing the prisoner, welcoming the stranger, and overturning the hierarchies of this world that treat some people as less worthy of love and respect.

So like Peter, let us be emboldened and strengthened by the knowledge that Jesus is God. Let us remember that Jesus is the kind of God who heals, who feeds, who casts out demons, who nurtures everyone in need. Let us remember that God is always with us to guide us, and that we have been entrusted with the good news that the world is being transformed into God’s kingdom where everyone is loved and nurtured so that they can flourish and thrive. Amen.

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